I must like food a lot. Our bookshelves aren’t organized beyond his and her zones, but if I spent an afternoon organizing the books, the food books would occupy a large territory. And that’s not including the shelves of cookbooks in the kitchen. So, what are my favorites?
Kitchen Confidential 
gave birth to a genre of books that looked at life in the kitchen. Bourdain is the grandfather of the Food Network-type programs of rocker-chefs and Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. Before Bourdain, you didn’t really think that much about how your steak got on its plate and by whom and what drugs they were taking while preparing it. Now, I don’t order fish on Mondays. Bourdain’s writing owes a lot to Hunter Thompson and 60’s beat writers – sometimes it’s great, other times it’s annoying. But Bourdain’s book and his continuing television series always capture his enormous love of life.
Other food books in my collection include In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
(My review is here) and My Life in France
(My review is here.). I love Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table. The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love
is a fun and full of food enthusiasm (review here).
Why am I a foodie? Because of Congers Lake and my grandfather.
Apt. 11d 
Heh. I’ve read all of bourdain’s books. Love them. And I read Julie and Julia followed by my life in France . I just got the Restaurant Man? By bastianich (Lydia’s son). And another Pollan book. In another life, I could have been a chef.
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I really like Ruth Reichl’s first book. James Beard has a book about growing up a serious foodie in Portland (OR) in the early 20th century that is also delightful. The food isn’t very edible (involved, heavy, . . .), but the stories are fun, and you get a flavor of life in the west in a city just beginning to exist.
I loved the post about Congers Lake and think it would be fun to hear more about your grandfather.
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